2008

Merry Christmas,

Hope this Holiday Season finds you in good cheer. It’s always interesting to look back over the year and realize all that has happened. I (that would be husband, Dave) got the assignment to write the Christmas letter this year so I’m pretty sure my perspective and Karen’s on the past year are probably quite different..so you get my perspective. That is until Karen reads it, then it will be ours, and the edit will begin.

Karen continues to work at the Brookings Public Library and I still work for the State Dept. of Labor. We still live in Brookings with companion, Cain. Adam lives in Brookings and works for First Bank & Trust. He works with several banks regarding deposits and processing them. He started in March and it’s by far the best job he has ever had so he is pretty pleased with that. Alissa got promoted at First Bank & Trust to the Mortgage Dept. and she seems to enjoy that too. She lives in Volga with Scott and their dog, Jinx. Scott manages a fish hatchery in Bruce, SD. Sara now works for Daktronics as a Software Specialist. She likes her job too and lives just outside of Brookings with Frank and their dog, Penny. Frank is attending SDSU and works part time at Casey’s.

So, that’s the basics. Alissa bought a mobile home in March in Volga. So, we moved her out of her apartment and moved her over there after painting, etc. Karen spent quite a bit of time helping to get the trailer ready but my effort was pretty minimal...just some painting, cleaning rugs etc. Sara bought a mobile home in June. That was a different story as more extensive work needed to be done on the home. Again, we spent quite a bit of time getting it ready. Then in early October, Adam buys a mobile home that, to most sane people, the best approach to the home would be to buy a gallon of gas and some matches. For eight weeks, at most every opportunity, we worked on it. Now, I’m talking ripping down ceilings, sheetrocking and finishing the ceilings in all the rooms except the two bedrooms and hallway, putting in a new stool and tiling in the bathroom, along with lots of minor electrical and plumbing repairs. The entryway had to be gutted and a new roof put on. Then painting kitchen cupboards along with winterizing the place. It still needs some work but now most sane people agree....it’s a pretty nice place.

We put our house on the market in August as we made an offer on a modular home that sits on a half acre south of Brookings. We went through the process of getting our house all ready for sale including shingling the rest of our home. Our house never got an offer so the time expired on our offer and we got away from it. Didn’t know when we went into this(we made the offer in July) that the market was about to get all kinds of bad. The Realtor thought it would be a good idea to drop our price to sell it. I didn’t. So when we got the opportunity to bail....it was heels and elbows. I do feel a little bad because Karen really liked the other place..and I thought it was pretty nice too. But I figured if the value of my home dropped, the home I made an offer on did too Getting out of the whole thing was a relief to me. Plus, I really do like the home I live in.

The past year was fast-paced and brought alot of great changes for our family. As always, with the new adventures, we ended up learning quite a bit and felt really good about the accomplishments.

It will be interesting to see what 2009 brings.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

Love, Dave & Karen

Lesson 10: Wrap up

Libraries are the path to the future. If anyone needs help setting up any of these wonderful tools and using them, I will be there to help. I love keeping up with technology. So many of these sites will be useful in many ways, both at work and play. I promise to maintain my blog and post something I have learned at least once a week. I will practice with the other tools we've learned. Thanks for the training opportunities you've given us with this challenge.

Lesson 9: wikis

This could have the potential to become very useful in a community. The library has been developing objectives and goals for the future. Imagine the interesting ideas we could gather from the community. Rather then hearing from just staff and board members, we could also hear from patrons. This could be a great asset to librarians.

Lesson 8: Tagging

I already use del.icio.us as my favorite tagging site. I might be at the front desk and can't remember where a certain site is and need it right away. It would take time to run to my computer and check my "favorites". So, I go to Delicious and find that site right away. I have the AR BookFinder, a juvenile series site, a reader's advisory site, IRS tax forms, etc. It's the best!

Lesson 6: Office 2.0

Oops! Forgot to write up my experiences on Office. It's very practical. I wrote part of my Christmas letter on Docs and sent it to my family for their changes. I also did a spreadsheet. I think this could be a very good way to edit documents in the workplace. I love it for home use too.

Lesson 7: Social Networking

I really liked joining Facebook. I think it'll be really nice for sharing pictures with friends and family. I'm not sure how I'd be able to use it at work yet but I'll play with it a bit.